Gregory Heym is Chief Economist at Brown Harris Stevens. His weekly series, The Line, covers new developments to the economy, including trends and forecasts. Read on for the latest report and subscribe here to receive The Line in your inbox.
Today, we present the latest on consumer spending and celebrate an amazing feat.
Retail Sales Rose 0.4% in April
Consumers continued spending last month, but at a lower-than-expected rate. While retail sales were up 0.4% from March, they did fall short of the 0.8% gain economists were looking for. This report is a mixture of good and bad news, so let’s look at the details.
Some good news:
- This was the first monthly increase in retail sales since January.
- Despite the sharp rise in prices and interest rates over the past year, consumers are still spending.
- If you exclude volatile categories like autos, building materials, and gasoline, sales were up 0.6% from March, and 5.2% from last year.
Now for the bad news:
- While up last month, retail sales have fallen in four of the past six months.
- Retail sales are not adjusted for inflation. Since the increase in sales (0.4%) matched the increase in consumer prices last month (also 0.4%), consumers spent more money for the same amount of goods and services.
- Sales are up just 1.6% from a year ago, while prices have risen by 4.9%. That means that—adjusted for inflation—retail sales have declined over the past year.
So, while you must give your fellow Americans credit for continuing to buy things in a tough economy, April’s retail sales report won’t do much to quash all the recession talk out there.
Congratulations to Hilda Bassey
In an effort to set a Guinness world record, a Nigerian chef named Hilda Bassey has cooked nonstop for 100 hours. During that time, she created over 55 recipes and 100 meals. To me that’s an amazing feat, but I’m sure my mother would say something like "I cooked nonstop for over 20 years for four boys who never stopped eating!"
The current record is 87 hours and 45 minutes set in 2019 by Lata Tondon, who supported Bassey during this attempt. The Guinness world record committee still needs to confirm the time, but I’ll go out on a limb and give a big congratulations to Hilda!